US Bancorp Fund Services Shares Best Practices for Maximizing Contact Center Talent Everyone knows that the contact center can be an extremely stressful environment where the day to day responsibilities are often emotionally draining. And for the best and brightest

Over the years, the one constant in the customer care arena has been technological change. It has evolved from the dawn of rudimentary call centers in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and grown via advances in touch tone dialing and toll

Customer experience (CX) innovation is no longer a luxury, with 89% of companies expecting to compete mostly through CX (Source Gartner). Here are five examples of how you can innovate in customer service, and deliver winning CX. Goodbye, IVR

By Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO, Creative Virtual 2016 saw the start of a renewed interest and flurry of excitement around automated, AI bots. However, publicized failures like that of Microsoft’s experimental chatbot Tay turned some of the chatbot excitement

With so many businesses focusing on customer experience, it’s become more difficult than ever to use it to differentiate a brand in the marketplace. In an environment of constantly rising customer expectations, companies are challenged to create programs that not

When Group Acticall acquired Sitel in the fall of 2015, there was some degree of initial skepticism that the two cultures could be successfully merged. Sitel was best known for its 30 years of proven experience, wide ranging worldwide business

Call Center Week Preview The theme of this year’s 2017 Call Center Week is Strengthening the Contact Center Foundation. The event organizer, IQPC, is an international producer of numerous multi industry events. CRMXchange spoke with several of the two hundred

This is DMG Consulting’s 14th annual Contact Center Workforce Optimization (WFO) Market Share Report. It analyzes revenue and market share for WFO vendors worldwide for 2016 and shows 5 year industry trends for this segment. This Report provides the most

The 2017 ICMI Contact Center Expo and Conference, held at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, FL from May 22 25, focused on the theme of “Delivering Exceptional Customer Experiences in a Complex and Changing World.” It provided executives, managers

Enterprise Connect, a conference and expo for “communications and collaboration transforming business” is mainly a showcase for IP Telephony, Unified Communications and other issues central to enterprise networks. The event, which took place March 2017 at the Gaylord Palms in

Fake News Could the Solution be the Poison? Why We Need AI Bots to Detect Fakes Faster Than Humans John Forrester, CMO of Inbenta In a connected world, where a fake news publisher has the ability to make thousands of dollars

As the title of the still popular song written 90 years ago tells us “The best things in life are free.” But while the moon and the stars belong to everyone, there has almost invariably been a price attached to

When any business files for Chapter 11 protection, there is always immediate speculation about whether it is the basis for a positive turnaround that will guide it back to profitability or a stopgap measure that will merely slow down an irreversible decline.

The first onsite event of the 2017 contact center educational calendar, Call Center Week Winter, took place at the Sheraton New Orleans in New Orleans, LA from January 17-20, attended by professionals representing a broad spectrum of organizations of all sizes and business categories.

As perhaps the most disruptive technological development on the horizon, robotic process automation (RPA) is actively changing the ways companies of all sizes manage their business processes, helping to streamline workflow and permanently altering the nature of the workforce.

On August 31, 2016, Genesys, a market leader in omnichannel customer experience and contact center solutions, and Interactive Intelligence, a global leader of cloud and on-premise solutions for customer engagement, communications and collaboration, announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Genesys will acquire Interactive Intelligence.

While technology is constantly changing and the make-up and responsibilities of front-line personnel are evolving in a variety of different ways, low employee morale and turnover are still the most pernicious issues in many operations.

An audience of 2,000 attendees had the opportunity to meet with more than 200 technology solution providers, and hear from a roster of over 130 speakers. CRMXchange was on the exhibit floor to learn more about the innovative new products and services coming up in the marketplace.

We gain insight from the Northridge Group, a consultancy where the policy is to choose its business leads on the basis of having an extensive hands-on background in developing and implementing strategies within the chosen industry.

While “screenplay” and “studio” are phrases usually associated with another western destination—Hollywood --- CRMXchange got a coming attraction from two suppliers of innovative applications who give these household words an entirely different meaning.

In our continuing series of pre-event conversations with innovative sponsors CRMXchange caught up with two suppliers who believe their offerings deliver a high level of sophistication while minimizing cost and complexity.

In this installment, we explore how a highly popular communication channel that has been underserved as a vehicle for customer interactions is rapidly emerging as a powerful new tool to reduce call volume and increase CSAT for businesses of all types in discussions with messaging specialists.

A service experience that requires a high degree of customer effort is often the catalyst that causes a consumer to switch to a competitor. In fact, recent research reveals that high-effort interactions make it four times more likely that a customer will take such an action.

The 2016 ICMI Contact Center Expo and Conference, which took place at the Long Beach (CA) Convention Center from May 2016 provided executives, managers and supervisors with a focused educational program as well as a diverse marketplace to review the latest products and services.

The technology landscape is changing, and organizations are adapting how they do business. Businesses are looking to leverage technology to get the most out of each department, and the contact center is no exception.

The first onsite event of the 2016 contact center educational calendar, Call Center Week Winter, was attended by a gathering of over 300 industry professionals representing a broad spectrum of organizations.

The trio of annual events, SpeechTEK, CRM Evolution and Customer Service Experience, covered a broad range of information in three co-located conference programs. On the Customer Solutions Expo exhibit floor, suppliers demonstrated offerings designed to help organizations stay a step ahead of the rapidly evolving need

Millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, are the biggest generation in history – and every customer service organization is asking how it should treat these 80 million, digitally native customers differently.

Ensure you understand what you are paying for before investing in a workforce management system. Regardless of marketing promises, they are not all equal. Choose your best solution to avoid future problems

The reports rank more than 220 brands,
such as industry leaders including Costco, USAA, Amazon.com, Apple and more
across 22 U.S. industry sectors, including financial services, insurance,
technology, online entertainment, retail stores, electronics, travel and
hospitality, and telecommunications.

For the past several years, WebRTC (Real Time Communications) has been widely touted as the next big thing in the contact center world. As 2015 unfolds, the reality is starting to catch up with the hype as innovative suppliers roll

.In our final report on the Future Contact
Center Summit, we talked with several solution providers (Castel
Communications, GeoFluent by Lionbridge, PrimeConnections, and VoiceBase) who discussed
new tools organizations can use to get closer to their customers.

In
our second report on products on display at the Future Contact Center Summit in
Orlando, four innovative vendors (Enghouse Interactive, Kodak Alaris, Loxysoft,
and Ytel) discuss the added capabilities offered by their solutions.

In a series of reports, CRMXchange will present revealing perspectives
and insights from a cross-section of the nearly 60 solution providers on the
exhibit floor. Our first installment looks at training and agent support.

When investing in new channels and services, companies need to make sure their contact center is well aligned. According to Aberdeen research, companies can gain significant business benefits by integrating contact centers within their omnichannel strategy.

VetAdvisor, which provides proactive coaching services in a variety of areas, has leveraged its deployment of SugarCRM’s advanced platform to rapidly expand its effectiveness in reaching and better serving military veterans.

Most businesses in today’s economy are looking to maximize investments and reduce wasted labor and operating expenses. One area that may make or break bottom-line profits is a company’s contact center, which is often the first point of interaction with customers.

Consumers trying to decide what to do next when they can’t find the information they need online can relate to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous line from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.”

While each organization may have its own set of service priorities, every business must now recognize and embrace one universal truth .Customers now expect more efficient service than ever from the companies with whom they do business.

Brands are starting to take notice of the importance of being there for customers during these make-or-break moments, and how to shape the Customer Experience by tailoring it to the individual’s critical decision-making moments.

Cisco defines the Internet of Everything (IoE) as the networked connection of people, process, data, and things. The true benefit of IoE is derived from the compound impact of connecting all these elements, and from the value this increased connectedness creates as everything comes online.

Beyond the competitive and recognition aspects, gamification also creates a social collaboration environment, delivers notifications and alerts, offers live guidance within training courses, and provides analytics and performance reviews.